Re: Wasting parts

Posted by jdemaris on February 25, 2006 at 20:18:45 from (66.218.18.249):

In Reply to: Re: Detroit diesel parts posted by NC Wayne on February 25, 2006 at 18:35:03:

I don't think I disagree with much of that. There are certain parts on specific engines that have anticipated life spans. When you know the history of machine, you can plan ahead a little, check and maybe replace some parts during slow season (winter around here). Some parts you cannot check without total disassembly - fuel injection pumps fall into that catagory. Some pumps tend to last 1,000,000 miles and some tend to last 80,000. Take one case-in-point. I just bought a truck a few weeks ago. 1994 Ford F250 4WD 7.3 turbo-diesel. It has 221,000 miles on it, the previous owner kicked-the-bucket and there are no service records. It runs perfect and looks well cared for - spent most of its life pulling a horse-trailer. I want to use the truck for long trips - so what do I do? (I don't really know). For all I know, the pump and injectors could have been done 30K miles ago - same goes for many other things. So, I can drive it and see what happens - or perhaps waste some time and money, and start pulling things apart. I already pulled all the injectors, they tested fine (low pressure though) and were dated Sept 1993. Do they have over 200K miles on them? Now, if they had new tips put in at some point in time, the dates wouldn't change, so who knows? My mindset is, it's winter - and I want this thing ready to drive this summer and be reliable. So, I put new injectors in. The injection pump no longer has the paint-seal marks on the top screws, so I know it's been apart at least once. So, I'll leave it alone. If the truck was a little older, the Roosamaster pump would have a plastic governor ring that is prone to failure - and I'd pull it apart to check. But, they were discontinued around 1985. I'll also pull all the driveshafts and check the ujoints, front and rear wheel bearings, all the brakes, etc. The water pump has a loose shaft and I've already bought a new one. For $48 new, it's not worth trying to rebuild it. I'm sure I'll wind up replacing a few parts that have more miles left in them.
Funny thing that relates to this. The last Deere dealership I worked at. We had to follow orders, and many good parts were wasted. I won't go into details, but I saw brand new 4020 engine blocks thrown out, new cylinder heads chucked for minor imperfections, tons of good used parts thrown out including powershift transmissions, reversers out of 430s, 440s, and 350 crawlers, and more. We also threw out a couple of good-running, almost new Yanmar diesels out of Deere tractors that were replaced under warranty but had nothing wrong with them (that's another story). We had a large amount of new old-stock two-cylinder tractor and engine parts - all left over from a previous bought-out dealership. One day, I was ordered to clean it all out, bring it all to the scrapyard, and make sure it all got destroyed.
This was late 70s and early 80s. Two-cylinder John Deeres were still being used on local farms, they weren't really considered collector's items. So left-over, slow-moving new parts for 1930s-1940s Deere tractors weren't considered particularly valuable. Complete used tractors e.g. As, Bs, Ls, even GPs and BOs were often only worth $50 -$250 on trade-in or as-is resale. Anyway, to make my painfully long story a little shorter - the big John Deere strike happened. It was a show of force by the United Auto Workers Union. They wanted to cripple Deere Company and put the fear of the Lord into Ford and General Motors - which they did. Deere Co. was crippled, and so were most of the dealers throughout the US. For over half a year, no new parts were available from Deere. Keep in mind, the Internet did not exist yet - for parts searching - if it did things would have been different. We had a modem we laid a telephone on, and that would talk to Deere Company in Syracuse, and do a convoluted parts search with limited success. That's when things really changed at our dealership. We started using "junk" parts and really doing some scrounging. We also started buying good running used tractors, dozers, log skidders, etc. and stripping them for parts. We rebuilt diesel engines with used or aftermarket parts, we started rebuilding pistons (knurling and regrooving), welding worn crankshafts, etc. To tell you the truth, it was kind of fun. For a while, we were REAL mechanics, and not just parts changers.
So yeah, I understand the waste involved when parts are changed "just for the h*ll of it."

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